NWR

I won’t criticise NWR any longer but Etosha is the most heavily visited National Park in Namibia and most tourists that visit the country make it here so I would still highly recommend it. However, there are a few different entry points to the Park and if you go through Anderson Gate, the gateway to Okaukeujo, there are a handful of lodges for you to choose from to stay in just outside the gate. I spent some time at Etosha Safari Camp, and even though I didn’t see any others, can give it my highest recommendation. It’s a cozy, quirky camp with luscious grass camp sites, with braii stands, lights and trees and you only pay $10US per night per person to stay (instead of $100/night at Okaukejo NWR). There are also hotel rooms, and the communal area is a big, open space with an elevated pool, an outdoor bar, a fire lit everynight with live music, a sports bar with a pool table and big screen TV, and a restaurant that is scattered throughout an alleyway of covered rooms and shack huts that they’ve decorated into a maze of brick walls with windows made out of vintage car doors. A lot of political posters and decorations display thought-provoking messages, and also an interesting insight to the history of colonial Africa. There’s an old train cart inside acting as the food storage room, and all the other old, wooden furniture almost makes it seem like a Wild Wild West Disney Park setting. The food is served buffet style, and coffee and tea sit out all day with cake for guests. And then with their tour guides, you can take day drives to visit the park and still have a great experience of Etosha without giving your money to NWR or paying too much for very little.

We spent a couple nights at Etosha Safari Camp to watch world cup games at their sports bar. The first was a great success; me and 4 German-Namibians cheered our hearts out and blew German-coloured vuvuzelas as loud as we could to watch Germany beat Argentina 4 – 0. The second game, Germany’s semi-final against Spain, was a bit more grim, and the Germans were much more quiet with their vuvuzelas. Oh well, it was a good run for Germany, and now we got to watch Netherlands and Spain contend for the World cup, two teams who have never previously won. Good for them 

All the reindeer, ahem, i mean pretty hooved animals drinking at Okaukejo waterhole

The great thing about Etosha National Park is that it is absolutely full of animals and it doesn’t really make a difference if you see it by day or night since you can’t leave camp at night anyway. However, there is one waterhole at each camp that is spotlighted so that would be the only thing you miss out not staying overnight within the camp.

During the day you still have a pretty good chance of seeing all the animals in Etosha, especially early morning or late afternoon. You have access to one of the healthiest population of Black Rhino, a species brought back from the brink of extinction against all poaching odds for its very valuable horn. There are soooo many different types of ungulates in the park, what my cousin Sara might call all reindeer, but they’re mostly different types of antelopes. There are tens-of-thousands of zebra and springbok, thousands of gemsbok, wildebeest, eland, impala, hartebeest, ostrich, jackals, vultures, mongooses, giraffe, and elephant, a few hundred kudu, bat-eared fox, wild cats, lions, hyena, white rhinos, and who knows how many cheetah and leopard, but there are some although spotting them is a stroke of luck. You can drive up to around 40 waterholes, and the bird-life here is a haven for bird-watchers, especially since it’s so flat and theres never a cloud in the sky during the dry season. After 3 weeks here, only going on drives about every other day, I’ve seen all of the above numerous times except white rhino, cheetah and leopards. Ive also seen a lot of spiders, skinks, other lizard things, and a dead puffader snake – all less exciting events. One evening I almost stepped on the cutest, tiny spotted owl that was camoflauged perfectly into the grey stone ground, and once we knowingly scared a wild cat out of its hole in the ground we saw it dart into, but then got more of a freight watching it jump out in lightning speed even though we knew full right that would happen. There are no mosquitos this time of year, but there are so many barbed bushes and spiky trees that you almost always have burrs or thorns on your clothes.

Since the park is fenced, migratory animals like elephants and wildebeest instead become resident, and even though the occasional animal digs itself out (lions), jumps the fence (eland, kudu) or bulldozes it over (elephants), animal populations seem to stabilize at very high densities. As much as it locks the animals into an area, it also locks out people from hunting or illegally poaching, so many animal populations are flourishing at much greater successes than they would without the fence. But, there are many problems and arguments against fencing, and the few stories I’ve heard of animals escaping from a fence but not being able to get back in (ie. Due to fence repairs) are grim – lions end up getting shot since they wander onto farmers private land and that’s their right, and one lonely hartebeest I saw on the wrong side of the fence beside the road will probably thirst to death since all the water is inside the park fence.

a tiny steenbok, looking like a deer in headlights – but don’t worry, we stopped in time

Even though a place like Chobe National Park operates without any fencing at all and I thought it was just great that way, there are convincing arguments that fencing has its pros and may be necessary for the park. However, the road infrastructure in Etosha seems very unnecessary. First of all, the roads marked on the map that’s given to tourists show a lot fewer roads than there actually are. There are a bunch of staff only roads, gravel pit roads, and old blocked roads that have become undrivable from flooding, fine dust or simply not being maintained. You can easily spot the 60 or 80 gravel pits dug all around the park to make these roads, which have been contemplated sources of anthrax spores, and sometimes the main roads are wide enough for 4 lane traffic. The speed limit is 60km/h, way too fast to avoid daily roadkill, and there’s something wrong about seeing a BMW sedan taking a speedy ‘safari-drive’ through the park whose roads cater easily to any type of car – even 60-passenger coach buses. Strangely enough, the most common roadkill are birds in flight – the silly things fly right under your wheel, or in my personal experience, into the side of the car or into the car antenna poles.

After becoming intimately connected to Kubublanco, it was comforting to see that the majority of all trucks both in and outside the park are Toyota Hiluxes, with the occasional Land Cruiser or Isuzu in the mix. At the research camp in Okaukuejo, UC Berkeley has 3 hiluxes, all with 400,000km+ on them, but still trucking, although very unreliable in an early-morning, cold start.

Links: http://www.namibiareservations.com/etoshasafaricampe.html

wildebeest on the Etosha salt pan

I never thought southern Africa would have such a strong American or European presence, but South Africa was definitely heavily European influenced, and the installment of English as the national language in all 4 of the countries I visited was also strange, but quite useful. However, Namibia was even more complicated, with their recent independence from South Africa still leaving a bunch of Afrikaans speakers, and their prior colonial ties to Germany allowing German to be even more common, yet English declared the official language. Deutsch, Flemish and German tourists benefited greatly in both South Africa and Namibia, often understanding bits of all three languages. The English or American presence was more noticeable in South Africa and Botswana, with a lot of ex-Peace Corps, researchers/scientists, and African-born British citizens working in tourism, government, or as doctors/vets.

zebra drinking at Okaukuejo Waterhole

I barely spent any time in Windhoek before making the 5 hr journey north to Etosha National Park, where Im staying. June and July are considered winter in Namibia, but according to my familiarity with Canadian and Icelandic winters, I can tell you its certainly more like summer time. Winter here really just means the days are a little shorter and the nights get cold. One night it did drop to 3 degrees celsius, which I agree is cold, but the day highs are still 20 or 25, and its been sunny every single day without a cloud in the sky. Sometimes its windy, which can either be a refreshing breeze or actually cool you, but damn is it dry here. Its also super flat and dusty so when a car drives along a road throughout the park, you can see the cloud of dust it kicks up from miles away. Etosha Salt Pan is a dried out lake bed that is so dry it is one of the biggest sources of dust in Africa. Add a little bit of wind and you can try to imagine what the air is like here. EVERYTHING is covered in grayish dust, and my skin is so dry that the baby oil I smother on it after showering is completely absorbed within minutes. My hair is fried, but Ive got enough to spare so that’s ok, but the dust is no good for cameras, changing lenses, changing film, or typing outside. It kind of reminds me of burning man conditions, and when you look over the vast expanse of the salt pan, hundreds of wildebeest, zebra, springbok, oryx (antelope that look like Samurais), and the occasional jackal or lion trying to create havoc look like their having their own Burning Man festival, Wildlife themed. When they’re far away, they look like floating black dots in the mirage, and then I feel like Im experiencing some artistic, optical illusion they’ve planned perfectly.

My allergies aren’t bad here, since all the vegetation is totally dried up, but I maybe sneeze ten times per day on average with all the dust. It gets annoying, and everyone must think I have a persistent cold. But, the dry season is great for animal spotting, since all the herbivores and therefore carnivores start to concentrate around the few remaining water sources. Many water holes in Etosha National Park aren’t natural, for different reasons. Some water holes fill naturally during the wet season, but are only created because of the gravel pits dug by park management for creating roads. Some water holes are natural but pumped articially to keep the water levels high enough to drink out of, and this is probably because the resident population of Etosha National park takes water for itself. There are 3 main camps inside the park (which is a huge 22,000km²), and I am staying in Okaukuejo but there’s also Halali and Namutoni. All three are inhabited with permanent staff from the Ministry of Tourism and Environment, lodging facilities for tourists, and all the tourism staff from NWR, the para-statal Namibian Wildlife Resort organization that monopolizes all camping in the park. Other operators can only enter during the day and drive around with their tourists for a while and then must exit before sunset. For it to be partly privatized but still 51% owned by the government means there is a lot of corruption in the higher rankings, with ridiculous salaries paid out to a certain few funded by the exuberant prices tourists must pay for the monopolized industry. However, NWR still quotes annual losses, so the government ends up bailing them out, and thus tax dollars are actually being used to pay for national park management where elsewhere, and in more typical situations, national parks are supposed to be a source of revenue for both local people and the government. NWR staff are all local Namibians, which I support fully, but there is little job accountability since being fired is almost impossible and even though tourists pay between $100-$300US per night for indoor accomodation, the quality of service is poor. The indoor accommodation is perfectly clean and somewhat luxurious, but rooms are small and the landscaping around the camp is almost non-existent. The only green, relaxing part of the camp is around the pool, while the camp site is comprised of square plots side by side on a big, dusty gravel lot. The game drives that go three times a day are 3 hrs long, with sometimes unqualified tour guides, so you may be lucky and see something exciting, but you learn very little and the snack time offered half way through the drive seems like a way of prolonging the tour and making you feel like the $80US you’ve spent is well spent.

a guilty looking jackal, who probably ate some leftovers and plastic from camp

The staff all live here, in housing given to them which varies from a tent to a trailer, or an actual house to a tourist-hut meant for the $150US/night paying guest. Clearly the organisation is a bit skewed, but the most horrifying thing is that NWR promotes themselves as a green resort, advertising their attempts to recycle at the recent centenary birthday of Etosha, and is meant to follow the rule that no trash can be dumped in the park; the reality is there are huge refuge dumps within the park gates, that burn trash right there, and another, unburnt pile of all the sorted recyclables sits separately, rusting away. They still manage to complain about jackals and ground squirrels getting into their trash and becoming a pest problem, but maybe if there wasn’t trash everywhere, those animals wouldn’t be snooping around so close to camp pestering tourists.